The outpouring of public anger towards Baby Peter's mother was extraordinary, even by the standards of previous, equally horrific cases of child neglect and murder.

Five months before details of the physical abuse of 17-month-old Peter became known worldwide, the appalling neglect and cruelty suffered by another child at the hands of her mother and stepfather was played out to a much smaller audience hundreds of miles from London.

Tiffany Wright, three, was starved to death by her mother, who then left her body in a bedroom above her Sheffield pub for nearly three days. The little girl had not eaten or drunk anything for 20 hours and was found in a filthy bed, in a room infested with beetles. The judge described it as "about as bad a case of child manslaughter as there can be".

Despite the nature of Tiffany's death, the public reaction to the mother who killed her is very different to that directed towards Tracey Connelly. Few, if any, will recognise the name of Tiffany's mother Sabrina Hirst, who was given a 12-year jail sentence for the manslaughter of her daughter in September 2007 - a month after Peter was found dead in his cot in north London.

An intelligent woman with nine GCSEs, and A-levels, Hirst has never become the subject of a Facebook site whose members wished to see her hanged.

Equally, the names Tina Hunt and James Howson are probably meaningless to most people.

At his home in Doncaster, Howson murdered his 16-month-old daughter Amy just before Christmas 2007, in a manner which has shocking similarities to that of 17-month-old Peter in Haringey. After weeks in which he punched and attacked his child, causing multiple fractures to her arms and legs, Howson inflicted a blow the head and, some time afterwards, put his daughter on his knee and hyperextended her back, breaking her spine in two places.

It was the broken back that killed her before the bleed from the head injury. "The bone was completely dislocated, resulting in spinal shock, rapid unconsciousness – mercifully – and to death," said Mrs Justice Cox.

Howson was jailed for life for murder. But Amy's mother, Hunt, 26, who admitted allowing the death of a child – the same offence to which Tracey Connelly pleaded guilty – was given a 12 month suspended sentence. In the lowest 1% band of intelligence, Hunt was said to be said to be completely dominated by Howson.

Connelly's lawyers highlight the case of Tina Hunt as evidence that Connelly has been treated more harshly than other mothers for the violence of their partners.

They have disputed the issuing of an indeterminate prison sentence on Connelly and the suggestion that she presents a continuing risk to young children.

But the trial judge – having read the probation and psychatric reports on Connelly – said she did indeed present a continuing risk to children.

As to the notoriety of the case of Peter as against other child deaths in the UK, most of those close to the defendants believe it is the fact that Haringey council should have been watching out for Peter which created what they describe as a "media frenzy" about the case.

"After the death of Victoria Climbié in Haringey, it was only going to take the next case to unleash this fury again, and this was the case," said one legal source.